Washington – NASA officials said Thursday that they will look into reports that astronauts were allowed to fly not long after drinking alcohol – on several occasions after warnings that they were intoxicated and a potential flight-safety risk.

Agency spokesman David Mould said one of two reviews of the medical and psychological health of astronauts scheduled to be made public today will include secondhand accounts of astronauts drinking before flights.

“We take this and other parts of the reports very seriously and will look into it,” Mould said.

The reports were first published online Thursday by Aviation Week & Space Technology magazine.

Mould said the reports of drinking before flights did not necessarily refer to shuttle flights into space but could have involved test flights on other vehicles.

The two NASA reviews were ordered by Administrator Michael Griffin following the arrest in February of former astronaut Lisa Nowak. She was accused of stalking and threatening a woman in Orlando whom she believed to be romantically involved with former astronaut William Oefelein, with whom Nowak had also been involved.

One of the two reviews, conducted by a panel of military and civilian government doctors, psychologists, lawyers and astronauts, was designed to look broadly into the psychological stresses and strains on astronauts, and how the agency has helped – or not helped – them to cope. The other was an internal review at Johnson Space Center that dealt more specifically with the psychological screening of aspiring astronauts.

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration has a 12-hour “bottle to throttle” rule that forbids drinking before flights. But according to Aviation Week, on at least two occasions astronauts were allowed to fly even after medical officers or other astronauts warned that they were intoxicated.

NASA’s space operations chief, Bill Gerstenmaier, told The Associated Press on Thursday that he had never had to deal with a safety issue involving astronaut drinking.

Also Thursday, NASA announced that the overhauled space shuttle Endeavour is scheduled to launch Aug. 7 – its first mission in nearly five years. The seven-member crew will include teacher-astronaut Barbara Morgan, who trained 22 years ago as the backup to teacher Christa McAuliffe, who died in the 1986 Challenger explosion.

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